Toxic expressions of masculinity, poverty and disadvantaged knowledge constitute critical factors that shape the vulnerability of local women in the impacts of floods and other natural disasters. The toxic expression of masculinity manifests in two different ways, each of which exacerbates women's vulnerability. The first way is through men’s negligence of family and parenting responsibilities. During the field interviews for this research, the researcher observed that a significant percentage of the women in the study areas are single parents. Mostly, their being single parents is caused by the negligence and irresponsibility of the men who, after getting the women pregnant, leave them to care for the kids alone. As a result, many of the women ended up engaging in whatever menial jobs they found to help them care for their kids.
This situation puts a lot of pressure on the women who now have to take care of not only themselves, but their children and their daily survival needs. This pressure exacerbates the vulnerability to flood impacts experienced by the women. The vulnerability becomes worse when toxic expressions of masculinity take the form of gender-based violence.
The second form of men’s expression of toxic masculinity towards women manifests in the form of gender-based violence. Although the fieldwork for this study took place in pre-Covid 19, the issues surrounding gender-based violence that unfolded during this period of lockdown in South Africa due to coronavirus pandemic are a pointer to the plight of women, especially the local women resident in rural settlements. Gender-based violence has reached a disastrous level this year during South Africa’s lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic. On the 48th evening of the country’s lockdown due to the current challenges of coronavirus pandemic, South Africa’s president, Ramaphosa exclaimed, “Men in our country have declared war on our women’’ (The South African News, 2020)27. Ramaphosa’s exclamation proceeded from
27 Available at: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/gender-based-violence-gbv-increase-lockdown-cyril- ramaphosa
reports by the South African Police Services that about 87,000 gender-based violence calls were reported during the first week of the lockdown (cited in Chotia, 2020). As reported by The South African News, this number included those who only expressed fears that the lockdown might worsen gender abuse incidences. Still, in the first three weeks after the lockdown started on 27 March28, more than 120,000 victims had called the South African National helpline due to gender-based violence (see Chotia, 2020). It is quite plausible to aver that these incidents constitute part of the multiple embedded factors which, in the event of any natural disaster, are mostly likely to worsen the vulnerability of the already-vulnerable groups in the country—here specifically, Black African women in flood-prone rural settlements.
South Africa’s government and other Civil Society Organisations in the country have put in some efforts to curb the problem of gender-based violence in the country, both before and during the lockdown. Since December 2019, the South African government has also been reported to have refurbished about ten State-owned buildings and converted them into havens for abused women. Similarly, at the early stage of the lockdown, The National Shelter Movement of South Africa and other partner organisations had devised a lockdown safety plan for victims of domestic violence. The plan mainly involves advising victims to call for help, either from neighbours or appropriate government-designated help centres. Despite these measures being put in place by the government and civil society organisations, it seems that for these interventions to be equitable, special attention needs to be given to the plight of local women, especially Black women residing in the rural settlements.
Rural women arguably are at a greater disadvantage in getting help from gender-based violence interventions. It was noted that the local women in the study sites: uMlazi, Inanda, Ntuzuma, and KwaMashu, due to the nature of their locations, are less likely than their urban counterparts to readily gain access to news media through which most interventions are publicised. Women in urban areas stand a better chance of being educated and enlightened, which increases their adaptive capacity. Besides, many rural women—due to lack of awareness—are also less likely to report abuse. Reports by some of the participants also revealed that besides the fact that many of the women are afraid of not being believed if they openly talk about abuse, especially that perpetuated by a close family member, many fear secondary victimisation from their perpetrators, with whom—in the long run—they will continue to live alongside in the home or
28 The lockdown of South Africa due to the coronavirus officially began on 27 March 2020, as was announced by the country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.
in the rural community, since they do not have any opportunity to relocate to a safer place, or to build a home at another location far away from the rural areas.
Feminist political ecology illustrates the relation between culture, gender, and vulnerability to environmental disasters (Rocheleau, 1996). In other words, dominant cultural beliefs constitute a significant determining factor of women’s vulnerability to the impacts of natural disasters.
Sometimes, cultural norms are not institutionalised but rather, remain a de facto belief by many as something embedded in everyday practices of certain social groups. For instance, in the study context, men’s negligent attitudes towards family responsibilities remained one of the contributing factors of women’s heightened vulnerability to flood impacts. Men’s negligence towards family responsibilities manifest in different ways, such as denying responsibility for women’s pregnancy or refusing to provide for their children. As mentioned above, though such attitudes may not constitute an institutionalised Zulu culture, it has become a norm to the extent that some women now regarded it as being embedded in AmaZulu culture. In other words, men’s nonchalant and negligent attitudes (as repeatedly mentioned by the participants) is a norm that has been tolerated among the women to the extent that some now regards it as a
‘culture’. As one woman (N1) in KwaMashu recounted:
In Zulu culture, you would find, in many instances, Zulu men would make you pregnant and leave you and then go to the next one and the next one… you end up with three kids. Moreover, who is going to take care of them? You just have to raise your kids, find something to do to raise your kids. Many women are just domestic workers, or they are unemployed, or they collect stuff like papers and cardboards to sell at stores; and that is how they raise their kids. A lot of those women you find that their houses are not in good shape [N1].
As noted by the Women, Gender and Development Organisation, WEDO (2001), “attitudinal barriers are deeply rooted in patriarchy-based socialisation, where men are considered superior to women—a systematic disempowerment that [leaves] women with little presence in decision- making bodies, resulting in the exclusion of their issues and concerns from the policy agenda”
(cited in Lambrou & Piana (2006, p.16). Views of feminist post-structuralist’s (Harding, 1986), which is also related to feminist political ecologists’ (Rocheleau, 1996, p.4) perspective on gender, environment and development, also emphasise that gendered division of rights and responsibilities creates a “situated knowledge” which manifests in how women, especially women from a lower-class, experience heightened vulnerability to environmental disasters.
Following from Lambrou’s & Piana’s (2006, p.1) views as expressed above, one can posit that besides the exclusion of women’s issues of concern from policy agenda and decision-making bodies, patriarchy-based socialisation can easily cause women to internalise oppression from men over time, thereby easily excusing men’s oppressive attitudes as normal. Such seemingly abnormal normalisation of men’s attitudes puts extra pressure on women. In this case study context, when men constantly refuse to take part in their responsibility, the sole responsibility now rests on the women who in usual situations would not want their children to suffer. As single mothers, single-handedly taking care the homes, including their children, increases their pressures, which when combined with the pressures brought by natural disasters like flood, place double the burden on them. Therefore, their adaptive capacity is tampered with, and their vulnerability increased. Besides avoidance of child welfare/home responsibility, men were also reported to spend much of their income on trivialities and alcohol, which also constitutes a disadvantage to many women in many ways. During a focus group discussion in KwaMashu, a lady explained:
Some of them [referring to men] are not working. However, some of them may have their job, but they like to drink. However, myself as a woman, I get a temporary job in which I get paid 300 Rands per month. From that 300 Rands, I have to do groceries. I have to buy clothes. I have to give my child bus fare, whereas the man or my husband, or my boyfriend, or the father of my child, gets a salary of seven thousand Rands per month and all he does is to drink and go out with friends. [FGD, K4(1)]
A participant [FGD, K3 (3)] in KwaMashu said that women are the ones working to cater to the household's needs. According to her, “most of the time women are working, and the males are in the house doing all the ‘wrong things’. They do not even take care of the children.” Some of the men prefer to buy alcohol rather than food, and this puts pressure on women who are concerned about feeding their children. Some of the women have resorted to putting up with the men's irresponsible attitudes because they are afraid of being abused should they confront or reprimand the man. During a focus group discussion in KwaMashu, one participant [FGD, K3(2)] asked why she would not caution her man of his irresponsible behaviour towards family, she exclaimed, “Woooooo! I cannot approach the man because if I tell him to buy this or buy that he would hit me or instead of that, he will stop buying even that small thing. Maybe he was buying the bread, and he may even stop buying that bread.” She further stated that even
though alcohol is not a solution to hunger in the house, she does not see the reason for telling the partner what to buy and what not to buy because this will fall on deaf ears.
The inability of flood adaptation responses to understand the differential needs of men and women constitutes a challenge to women as they adapt to floods. For instance, it was reported that when there is a flood, the municipality usually provides temporary shelters, sometimes in the community town hall, for the affected victims. However, in the temporary shelters, women’s accommodations are not separated from those of men. This creates an uncomfortable environment for the women in utilising such opportunities as they are not able to have any privacy for themselves. The situation becomes more concerning for women who go there with their children because they fear being abused. A participant from (U I) reported that she once took refuge in the Town Hall that was provided for flood victims in the community. However, after staying there for about two weeks, she was not comfortable because she went there with her girls. According to her, the main point of concern was that some of the men who were also taking refuge there were not working, and that was a point of concern for the safety of her girls.
She narrated other reasons that made her uncomfortable, including the fact that the Town Hall had no bathroom. They had to use the toilet room to take a bath.
In South Africa, there is a provision for a woman to approach the maintenance court to demand from the father of the child for the welfare of the child. However, this system seems not to work in favour of all women, especially in instances where the baby’s father is not working.
Even if the father may be working, the fear of the consequences—the fear of violence from the man—still deters some of them from approaching the court. A participant from Ntuzuma explained her situation and the ordeal of other women she had observed:
People can go to the maintenance court. But I know for a fact some of them are scared.
I went to the maintenance court to get my second child supported. I still receive that money for maintenance. But some women are scared. They would be like, ‘No, what if he kills me? What if he kills the child?’ And some would say, ‘What if I go there and approve whatever and then he resigns and take the package?’ [N1]
The above narrative illustrates some of the ordeals that women experience because of men’s negligence of their responsibility. Such negligence further puts pressure on the women who would not want to abandon their children or fail to cater for their needs. Such pressure is worsened when the men go beyond just being negligent of their responsibility, to inflicting
violent abuse on women. A participant in KwaMashu explained that fear of further violence constitutes one of the reasons women do not report abuse to the police or the court. She narrated that many men in the locations happen to be violent. Moreover, it is difficult to report them because instead of making things better, there is a likelihood that the violence they experience would increase.
Some women find it challenging to approach the court amidst incidences of perpetual threats from the men. When asked why they would not approach the court for a protection order to deter the man from threatening her, one participant (FGD, K4(2)] interjected, “29Aiboooooo!
The protection order does not help. When he has beaten me, I will go back and say this is my protection order.” According to her, she would rather remain a single parent and endure the pressure that comes with taking care of the children than approaching a court to seek justice or relief. Another participant in that focus group had this to say concerning the situation:
You have to be alone when you are going to court. And you are going to see this guy.
When you are going to the taxi station, you see that guy, and you become enemies. He can beat you up. The protection order will not help you because when you are going to the police station and say this guy did this and this, they say you must have a warrant of arrest. A protection order does not help. [FGD, K4(1)]
Many women fear that reporting the men would create enmity between them and the men.
Moreover, such enmity would only lead to continuous and more violence and abuse from them.
During times of floods, such a continuous threat of violence exacerbates women's vulnerability.
Vulnerability is further worsened by a weak and complicated justice system, which does not ensure women's adequate protection and security. In some other cases, there was a critical nexus between poverty and violence. Some poor women are afraid that if they report their perpetrators, they may stop providing the little assistance they used to provide for them and their kids. Some expressed that they would rather endure being harassed by the men because if they report them to police, they would still come back and cohabit in the same home or in the same community with these abusers, who would keep abusing them the more. When asked why she would relocate to a different city, one participant reported that she could not afford the high cost of securing land in a better city. [FGD – K2]
29 The word, ‘Aibo' is an exclamation in the Zulu language that expresses a surprise, a shock, or disbelief.
Sometimes it is used to mean concepts like, 'they are not,' 'you do not', and 'it is not true.'
The critical nexus between poverty and violence is and should be an important consideration in any disaster intervention for rural women. In the context of South Africa, the historical disadvantages of many rural women still expose them to gender violence because despite having the rights, they do not have the means to acquire land. Ownership of land increases their choices and gives them power—making them potentially less vulnerable. A study in West Bengal in India and on the outskirts of Yangon in Myanmar by the UN Women (2016) observed that women who own land were eight times less likely to experiences domestic violence. Land ownership increases women’s agency to adapt to impact of natural disasters.